Green Intolerance

A teenage waitress has been warned she will be sacked unless she quits smoking.

Fair enough. After all, it's for employers to set the terms under which they will employ staff, and if they don't want her to smoke on company premises, then they have the backing of law. After all, businesses lose a lot of time from employee smoking breaks.

But wait:

Bethany South, 16, has been told to give up the habit for good – both during breaks from work and even in her spare time – or risk losing her job.

Her boss Julian Preston-Powers issued the warning after catching her lighting up outside Intenso Espresso Bar in Portland Road, Hove.

He said her smoking went against the policy of the café, which serves healthy, organic food.

Anything else you'd like to ban in her own time, Mr Prat-Power? No drinking alcohol, unless it's sourced from naturally-grown grapes tended by Provencal peasants and flown to the UK by carrier pigeons? Uneconomic day trips by car to Alton Towers, oooh, no, we can't have that, can we? Would you like to regulate the newspaper she reads too? Pop into her living room and check that she's watching an 'ecologically approved' TV programme, something by David Attenborough?

I hope she takes him to a tribunal and wins big. In fact, she could:

Mr Preston-Powers, who is franchise director for the coffee shop, said: “I contacted employment lawyers and they told me I wouldn’t have a leg to stand on in front of a tribunal but I feel so strongly about this that I was happy to go ahead with it.".

And there you have the green approach to the law in its purest form; I know I'm in the wrong, but I just don't care...

And I'll remember this the next time some authoritarian little creep is promoting his green agenda. Because this is what they are all like, deep down - people who want to bully and control teenage girls, because they can.